WWW 2008 / Poster Paper April 21-25, 2008 · Beijing, China

2LIP: The Step Towards The Web3D

Jacek Jankowski, Sebastian Ryszard Kruk
Digital Enterprise Research Institute
National University of Ireland, Galway
IDA Business Park, Galway, Ireland
firstname.lastname@deri.org

ABSTRACT we worked out a new way for designing interactive 3D web

The World Wide Web allows users to create and publish a variety applications - 2-Layer Interface Paradigm (2LIP).
of resources, including multimedia ones. Most of the
contemporary best practices for designing web interfaces, 2. 2LIP
however, do not take into account the 3D techniques. Some web designers dream about building interfaces that
approach the richness of three-dimensional reality. They believe
In this paper we present a novel approach for designing
that the closer the interfaces are to the real world, the easier it will
interactive web applications – 2-Layer Interface Paradigm (2LIP).
be to use them. Nevertheless, user studies proved that complex
The background layer of the 2LIP-type user interface is a 3D
and disorienting navigation and annoying occlusions can slow
scene, which a user cannot directly interact with. The foreground
performance in 3D interfaces [2,3].
layer is HTML content. Only taking an action on this content (e.g.
pressing a hyperlink, scrolling a page) can affect the 3D scene.
We introduce a reference implementation of 2LIP: Copernicus –
The Virtual 3D Encyclopedia, which shows one of the potential
paths of the evolution of Wikipedia towards Web 3.0. Based on
the evaluation of Copernicus we prove that designing web
interfaces according to 2LIP provides users a better browsing
experience, without harming the interaction.

Categories and Subject Descriptors

H.5.2 [Information interfaces and presentation]: User Interfaces

Figure 1. Two-layer architecture of a Web3D page

General Terms
Design
Keywords
Design, Web3D, Wikipedia, WPF
1. INTRODUCTION
The World Wide Web is a collection of documents and other
resources linked by hyperlinks. It changes and evolves, but its
definition is still the same after almost twenty years of existence.
However, Web science researchers work on new solutions to
bring the Web into a new dimension.
The notion of a three-dimensional Internet in the context of
WWW has already been discussed [3]. Back in the late 90s there
was a huge activity concentrated on the Virtual Reality Markup
Language (VRML). Nevertheless, this early web standard did not
generate a commercial success. The language was excessively
complex; the graphics and the interaction model it generated were
not attractive. Despite the failure of VRML and other similar
solutions, and inspired by the enormous popularity of video
games along with a massive interest in Second Life-type products,
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
WWW 2008, April 21-25, 2008, Beijing, China.
ACM 978-1-60558-085-2/08/04
Our answer to this problem is 2LIP (pren. tulip). The main
rationale behind this paradigm is to introduce a level of 3D-based
entertainment, and couple it with well adapted 2D-based
interactions. 2LIP assumes that building graphical user interfaces
involves the integration of two layers (see Fig. 1):
• the background - a 3D scene;
• the foreground - a 2D information and interaction layer.
The hypertext information, together with graphics and interaction
interface, is presented on the foreground layer. This is the primary
information carrier of the 2LIP model.
The background layer introduces the entertainment aspect to the
information presented in the foreground. A user cannot directly
interact with the 3D scene presented in this layer. However, it is
possible to “browse” the scene following predefined paths
(camera moves) invoked from the interaction interface, e.g., by
clicking a hyperlink, on the foreground layer.
The presented model of 2LIP builds upon well established
hypertext interactions. It adds a second layer of interactive, and
entertaining, 3D scene related to presented information. We
foresee that compared to other attempts to introduce full fledged
3D solutions to the Web, 2LIP avoids many problems:
• Users do not have to learn a new interaction model, which
might be pretty hard to understand in the context of the
Internet hypertext environment.

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• It is possible to read without the 3D scene; the information is
not scattered or embedded into the 3D scene, but rather
presented in a concise form familiar to the Internet users.
• Users can interact with the hypertext using simple navigation;
it does not scare off those who are not accustomed to 3D
interactions.
Our approach does not rapidly change the style of interaction,
from the one users were used to in classic HTML pages. 2LIP
allows users to adapt gradually to the new approach of presenting
information.
Our research derives from the concept of the Augmented Realty
[1]. However, instead of creating a layer over the real world, we
decided to put the information HTML-layer on the top of the
computer generated 3D scene.
3. COPERNICUS – 2LIP IN PRACTICE
In order to illustrate and evaluate our idea we have implemented
(using Windows Presentation Foundation) the prototype system
called Copernicus (see http://copernicus.deri.ie). We have decided
to build a web application that will resemble Wikipedia, but
which will implement the 2LIP model.
The welcome page of Copernicus is very similar to the home page
of Wikipedia. The major difference is that the user can notice an
animation of a spinning Earth instead of a sphere of puzzles.
Figure 2. An Example Copernicus Article
Once the user had performed the search and chose one of the
results, related to information about a specific geographical
region, the camera will move to this particular place on the
spinning globe. For instance: the camera will “fly” towards the
island of Ireland as a result of searching for “irish heritage park”;
eventually, the article about the Irish Heritage Park in
Williamsburg will be presented to the user (see Fig. 2).
The style of the content and the general layout of the article
resembles Wikipedia. In comparison to a classic wiki page, the
background in Copernicus is a 3D visualization of the
place/object described in the article. Users can change the font
size and the transparency of the presented text using a set of
sliders; they can make their reading experience more convenient
by adjusting these parameters.
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April 21-25, 2008 · Beijing, China
While reading an article the user can be presented with details
from the 3D scene; clicking on the hyperlinks, e.g., related to an
interesting place, or scrolling the text of the article, can trigger a
predefined camera movement. For example: a user reading an
article about The Temple of Kukulcan might be interested in
taking a closer look at the skull that is described as a “silent
monument of a years of annihilation”. Clicking the “skull” link
triggers the animation. The camera will smoothly move over the
3D scene following the predefined motion path; it will stop at the
top of the pyramid showing this historical artefact (see Fig. 1).
4. EVALUATION
Our goals were to determine whether 2LIP (1) has a positive
effect on the visual and associative memory, (2) improves the
spatial cognition of presented information, (3) increases the
overall user’s satisfaction. We have set up a simple apparatus; it
consisted of four articles (two of which were about non-existing
places). Two articles were presented to the participants using
Copernicus, remaining two were presented using MediaWiki. We
have asked 19 participants to read these articles thoroughly, and
later answer a number of questions, followed by a questionnaire.
The evaluation results shown that Copernicus increased the users
satisfaction (especially the visual memory - 41%) compared to
MediaWiki. Although we have noticed a slight (below 9%)
decrease of correct answers for the significant facts, the
participants were able to recall more facts correctly when they
were presented the articles in Copernicus (increase by overall
12%, including 22% for the spatial information). More details
about the evaluation and results can be found at:
http://copernicus.deri.ie/evaluation.htm.
5. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
Wikipedia became successful because it is written collaboratively
by volunteers around the world. We are also going to give
potential users opportunity for collaboration. We plan to make a
content editor, conceptually similar to the one from Wikipedia.
The process of creating new Copernicus pages will consist of
writing an article and uploading a 3D model in XAML format.
In this article, we have presented 2LIP – a new way for designing
interactive 3D web applications. We introduced Copernicus, a
prototype application that can be placed between Web 2.0 and
Web3D. The evaluation has shown that due to only a slight
modification of the current web browsing, users had no problems
to interact with this system. They have gained, however, by more
entertaining style, which improved their spatial and overall
cognition. We believe that this kind of evolution is necessary to
prepare people for the full-fledged 3D Internet.
6. REFERENCES
[1] Feiner, S., Augmented Reality: A new way of seeing,
Scientific American, 286(4): 48–55, 2002.
[2] Risden, K., Czerwinski, M. P., Munzner, T. and Cook, D. B.,
An Initial Examination of Ease of Use for 2D and 3D
Information Visualizations of Web Content, International
Journal of Human Computer Studies, 53, 5 (2000).
[3] Shneiderman, B. and Plaisant, C. Designing the user
interface: strategies for effective Human-Computer
Interaction, 4th ed., Addison-Wesley, 2004.